Hats off to John Ashcroft's Justice Department for illegally arresting Oregonion lawyer Brandon Mayfield, smearing him as a terrorist, holding him for weeks on the basis of extra-judicial "material witness" status (note: no charge necessary for this one), and then having to let him go and apologize when the whole thing turned out to be a mistake.
MAY 26--The FBI apologized yesterday to the Oregon lawyer arrested and jailed in connection with the March 11 Madrid bombings, saying that the agency's identification of a key smudged fingerprint supposedly linking Brandon Mayfield to the Spanish plot was faulty
Whoops. Well it's a good thing this arrest wasn't hyped to the media as a slam-dunk terrorist conviction.
A U.S. counterterrorism official tells Newsweek that the fingerprint was an "absolutely incontrovertible match."
Oh. By "absolutely incontroveritble," I guess they meant, "totally fucking wrong." But it's a joke to pretent that this arrest was based on a fingerprint. The real reason this lawyer was arrested?
Mayfield married an Egyptian woman, converted to Islam 16 years ago and was active in a local Oregon mosque whose members had openly protested government antiterror policies. But it was another thing that leapt out at investigators: in 2002, Mayfield had volunteered to provide legal help for Jeffrey Battle, one of the ringleaders of the Portland Seven -- a group of local jihadists who had flown to Asia after 9/11 in an unsuccessful effort to fight with the Taliban.
A brief list of things in that paragraph that are not crimes. 1) Converting to Islam. 2)Attending mosque. 3) Protesting government "antiterror" (read: antiterror/squash domestic opposition) policies. 4) Offering defense counsel to other people accused of crimes. This article omits the fact that Mayfield was representing Battle on an un-related child-custody case. Of course, THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT. The accused get legal representation in this country, or at least they used to, NO MATTER WHAT THE ACCUSATION. I don't care if this guy was defending Manson, legal representation is not a crime. Unless, of course, you're this asshole.
If that print had matched with some little old lady in Peoria, that would be one thing," says a U.S. official. "But what are the odds it would be somebody with this background?"
What background??? Some jumpy FBI agents were monitoring this guy because, according to his brother, Mayfield was "less than super-happy with the policies of the Bush administration," and, a Muslim. So now my questions are these: How many other people have been detained on bogus "material witness" orders? Why do Muslims need to appear super-patriotic to avoid illegal government monitoring and/or illegal search and seizure? What is being done to restore some of the legal safeguards stripped away post-911 and finally, when is this country going to wake the fuck up and demand John Ashcroft's resignation as well as that of the simian boy-king who keeps him and others like him employed????
Here's the affadavit which led to Mayfield's arrest
Justin Raimondo on why Jack Ashcroft needs to go
An un-named "counter-terrorism official" crowing about an "absolutely incontrovertible match"
South Carolina is keeping it real and firing up the electric chair after an eight year hiatus. Good. I was worried that we were going to leave the chair behind in, oh, say the nineteenth century. But wait, for James Neil Tucker there's a twist.
Tucker didn't actively choose electrocution. He just didn't ask for lethal injection, as he could have under a state law that applies to inmates sent to death row before June 1995. For those condemned after that, injection is automatic.
So you got that? Sentenced after 1995, lethal injection is automatic. Sentenced before 1995, you get to choose between the chair and the needle, but if you do nothing, you get the chair. Why do I get the sense that this schmuck's lawyers were asleep on this one? Or did they just assume that since the last 22 people executed in South Carolina all got lethal injection, that must be the way it's done?
I'm pretty optimistic that capital punishment will disappear within my lifetime. But the debate will always survive in some form or another. What won't survive, however, is the electic chair. Kids will read about it in history books the way they read about burnings at the stake.
Prison officials say they are testing the chair just as they test lethal injection procedures. The execution will be carried out in the same manner as the tests -- an extremely high jolt of current for several seconds, a pause, and a weaker current for about two minutes.
Yeah that sounds real humane. About a half step above strapping someone to a chair and hitting them with a hammer. Like an animal. The article goes on to mention stories about prisoners not dying immediately or being set on fire. It also mentions how Nebraska is the only state in the union to require electrocution as the means of state execution. Way to go Nebraska. First in corn huskin' AND shootin' folks full of electricity. Brother.
South C'lina loves grits and electrocution
And the hits just keep on coming.
Previously secret sworn statements by detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq describe in raw detail abuse that goes well beyond what has been made public, adding allegations of prisoners being ridden like animals, sexually fondled by female soldiers and forced to retrieve their food from toilets.
Hilas also said he witnessed an Army translator having sex with a boy at the prison. He said the boy was between 15 and 18 years old. Someone hung sheets to block the view, but Hilas said he heard the boy's screams and climbed a door to get a better look. Hilas said he watched the assault and told investigators that it was documented by a female soldier taking pictures.
Good. And if actual sex isn't enough:
Hilas told investigators that he asked Graner for the time one day because he wanted to pray. He said Graner cuffed him to the bars of a cell window and left him there for close to five hours, his feet dangling off the floor. Hilas also said he watched as Graner and others sodomized a detainee with a phosphoric light. "They tied him to the bed," Hilas said.
Other shit in there, like forcing prisoners to eat pork, threatening to rape their wives, the prisoners themselves, severe beatings....yeah we got it all in there. And then there's this:
A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (news - web sites) said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father's resistance to interrogators.
The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.
Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said.
Wow. There are still worse out there. Bank on it.
Washington Post Article (Don't miss the new pictures)
Please file this under "Nothing New to See Here":
A former Afghan police colonel gave a graphic account in an interview this week of being subjected to beating, kicking, sleep deprivation, taunts and sexual abuse during about 40 days he spent in American custody in Afghanistan last summer. He also said he had been repeatedly photographed, often while naked.
(break)
"They were taunting me and laughing and asking very rude questions, like which animal did I like having sex with, and which animal do you want us to bring in for you to have sex with," he said of his time in Gardez.
"They were mimicking the sounds of a sheep, a cow and a donkey," he said, "and asking which one I would like to have sex with. They kept insisting, and they were kicking me so much that eventually I said a cow."
And don't forget the standard:
More than once, he said, soldiers inserted their fingers into his anus. He said one had touched his penis and asked, "Why is this unhappy?"
Man, those six or seven schmucks who are going to take the fall for an entire nation's worth of incompetence in Iraq were really busy. I mean, how did these six of seven bad individuals, who by the way partook in a totally isolated incident which in no way reflects gross, sytemic negligence and sanctioned abuse, get all the way to Afghanistan to stick their fingers in some dude's anus, and then all the way back to Iraq in time for their court martial? Wow. You really have to congratulate those six or seven isolated individuals, who are in-no-way-representative-of-larger-and-massive-brutality, for their skill in pulling off such feats of logistical complexity.
Oh, there are no pictures of this. So because we're functionally illiterate, you'll never hear about this again.
Now I'm skeptical of "We've really turned the corner now he's on the run!" type proclamations. Still, we're starting to see a really serious divide in the GOP over this issue. On the one hand, you have jackasses like, James Inhofe (R-grease monkey from Oklahoma) who are "outraged at the outrage" over the prisoner abuse story. Translation: "This is not a big deal fuck those guys they deserved it we're still number one I want to lick George Bush's nutsack." Man, Inhofe. Learn how to use a period, dude. Also Don Rickels, I mean Don Nickels, the other jackass from Oklahoma, talking about how "people are overreacting." Look, Pickles. I mean, shit. NICKLES! People are just starting to react. On the other hand, you have Lindsey Graham, Geroge Will, Mona Charen, David Brooks, and a whole host of other politicians and commentators, who though normally willing to follow W. to the grave, are now subtley and not so subtley distancing themselves from this whole Iraq schwag. Yeah, schwag is a word around here. You know what they say about those proverbial rats and the proverbial sinking ship...time to get yourself out of the fucking proverb. Or something.
Personally, I'm content to divide the mob, let the stragglers flee, then charge and pick off the main, hobbled force. Then, burn the village. Proverbially speaking, of course.
I'll try not to re-hash all the obvious points. But there are a few matters worth emphasizing
1. Abuse and torture at the hands of the U.S. military are nothing new. This is not to say that the U.S. military is the only outfit who practices such crimes, and it's not to say that everyone in the U.S. military is guilty, but as long as there are interrogations and pressures for intelligence, we will continue to see abuses like those at Abu Gharib. Whether it's "merely" stripping prisoners naked and humiliating them, or beating them, or sodomizing them with a brokern headlight (yes, that's been one of the recent allegations), or worse, what we've seen recently is nothing new. WSW has a nice little list In fact, this is some of the mildest abuse that takes place. Rumsfeld, today, warned that there are more pictures and video footage that show the same kind of abuse. Here's a written preview of what's to come. At it's worst, the intelligence units of the military practice "rendering," whereby suspects are turned over to foreign intelligence units (Egyptian, Syrian, etc.) and tortured for information. The U.S. doesn't beat the shit out of these guys, it outsources.
2. I've seen three kinds of right-wing defense so far. a) This-is-really-not-a-big-deal defense (Rush Limbaugh, comparing the actions in the photos to frat hazing, and asking, "haven't you ever heard of blowing off steam?" Hey Rush, I hope you also end up naked and tied to a leash when they haul your fat ass off to jail. b) What Saddam/Arab governments/Stalin did was worse-defense (various apologists). I shit you not. Stalin. I'm glad to see this country is setting the bar so high. This kind of irrelevence just makes the hole even deeper. Mostly though, it just makes me sick. c) This-is-bad-but-CBS-shouldn't-have-shown-these-pictures-in-the-first-place-by-damn-defense (Jonah Goldberg) Excuse me? Why, because it makes you look like a horse's ass? A horse's ass that abets and wants to cover up torture? Look, don't say you think it's bad but that we would all be better off if the photographs never surfaced. The photographs are the only reason this story is getting any play at all. Witness accounts and stories don't cut it in this illiterate nation we live in. So stop talking out both sides of your mouth. This line, however, simply takes it. "Of course, CBS had every right to do what it did. But that's irrelevant. Nobody's suggesting the government should have stopped them. I'm suggesting that CBS should have stopped itself. Now we'll all have to live with the consequences - and some of us will die from them." Maybe. But if some of 'us' (Americans I presume? I know he's not writing about Iraqis) die from this, it won't be because CBS showed these photos. It will be because of people like Goldberg who gleefully cheered on this illegal war in the first place.
Media Matters has a nice little sampling of various conservative excuses and targets who are the real culprits behind this mess. We've got women in the military (Ann Coulter, Linda Chavez, Diana West), feminists (George Neumyr, The American Spectator), and of course, Muslims, (Cal Thomas, assorted other racists. Go check it out. It's also worth noting that the one female soldier pictured so far seems to getting more than her share of photo-time (and related public-flogging).
3. Sorry, Don Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere. At least, that's my opinion. I'm less sure of this as I write this than I was this morning, but it would be worse for the administration to take the dagger out than to leave it in at this point. Firing Rumsfeld would be a public admission that the wheels have come off the bus. Of course, a lot of us know that the wheels came off the bus a long time ago, along with the headlights, the windows, and that little red stop sign that the driver with three fingers on his right hand can pull out. Then the bus was lit on fire and pissed on. But Bush and Karl Rove have wedded themselves to "staying the course" in Iraq. Axing Rumsfeld would make even the most hyper-patriotic chest-beaters pause and examine just how bad things have gotten on the ground. Rumsfeld also creates a convenient buffer of blame for the preznit. Note the not-so-subtle leak of Chimpy McSmirkster dressing down his defense secretary. No, Bush bears as much responsibilitiy for what happened at the prision as Rumsfeld. Don't believe the hype. But this way, with Rummy apologizing and then slinking into the background for a while, when no torture pictures emerge next month and only 100 U.S. servicemen are killed, jackasses like Bill Safire can write about how "we've really turned the corner now." Uh-huh.
Oh, so now the national deficit might be a problem?
The head of the Federal Reserve voiced a note of concern today about the effects of America's soaring national budget deficit on the country's long-term economic stability.
"We in the United States have been incurring ever larger deficits," the Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, said. He added that "we have lurched" from a budget surplus in 2000 to a deficit that is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to amount to 4.25 percent of gross domestic product this year, or about $500 billion.
This is the same man who warned us all in 2000 that the nation might be in danger of paying off its debt too rapidly. To counter this, Greenspan wanted to pursue a “glide path” of deficit reduction. In order to pursue this “glide path,” Greenspan became an enthusiastic backer of Bush’s tax cut legislation. Needless to say, the Fed Chariman neglected to mention his own role in creating our current unsustainable defecits.
Some have suggested that the Greenspan's backing was essential to winning over some of the undecided votes in Congress. It sure as hell didn’t help matters.
Greenspan has been conducting himself like a mob boss running his personal orgainzed crime syndicate for too long. Should Kerry win, his first job should be to force out this old timer.
This just in: staggering debt will crush you (us)